The coin toss is one of those parts of college football that usually gets about 10 seconds of attention. A captain walks to midfield. The referee flips the coin. One coach makes a call. Then everyone moves on. LSU head coach Lane Kiffin sees it differently.
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“The coin toss is discussed every week. Analytics are referred to. You know, as far as where are we playing?” Kiffin said in his August 20 presser. “What are the rankings of offense, defense? What are success of our first drives? The opponent’s first drives, the opponent’s defense, our defense.”
At Ole Miss, Kiffin’s team scored 554 points in 15 games last season, averaging 36.9 per game. The Rebels averaged 489.7 yards/game and 6.7 yards per play, while converting 43.1% of their third downs. They finished 13-2 and reached the College Football Playoff semifinals. So giving that offense the ball first is not exactly a reckless decision. The Rebels also showed how quickly they could turn an opening possession into points.
Against Tulane in September, Ole Miss won the toss, chose to receive and drove 75 yards for a touchdown on its first possession. The drive took only 2:37 and ended with Dae’Quan Wright catching a five-yard touchdown pass from Trinidad Chambliss. As a result, Kiffin places a lot of emphasis on the coin toss.
“It’s not the old days where you just say, tails never fails or something,” Kiffin said. “We go a lot into that, and our numbers over time would show us the majority of the time. We end up taking the ball outside of a few certain criteria. But a lot of that’s due to the performance of our offense, especially in the first quarter of games has done as well as anybody in the country over time.”
Last season, Ole Miss finished with 65 touchdowns. The Rebels also converted 21 of 31 fourth-down attempts. This is why Kiffin’s coin-toss philosophy is less about being different for the sake of being different.
Of course, losing or winning a coin toss depends entirely on luck. But when former head coach Brian Kelly lost 12 consecutive coin tosses, it ignited social media chatter. Even when he won the toss, Brian Kelly didn’t defer the ball and went with the same aggressive approach Kiffin employed at Ole Miss. Unlike Kiffin, though, Kelly’s approach backfired.
Take the 2023 season as an example. Kelly had the Heisman-winning QB, Jayden Daniels, with him. So, taking the ball upon winning the toss made sense. However, that year the Tigers’ defense was not really elite. That meant in games against Alabama, they had to give the ball to the opponent at the beginning of the second half. Two-possesion leads were frequent, and LSU was left with little time to respond.